I'm Zekun Yang,
You can also call me Z.
I'm a multi-disciplinary designer based in New York City.
I graduated from the School of Visual Arts and majored in user experience design (Products of Design) with a thesis called Do As a Pirate Does.
I've designed a creative product trading platform featuring a half-digital-half-physical immersive experience.
I've redesigned a dashboard system with a better user experience and successfully launched it in two months.
I've done multiple design research projects.
I'm an industrial designer, before focusing on digital UX design.
MFA Thesis
Featured Projects
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Digital & Physical UX Design ; Service Design
Outworks, an underground flash market for creators to sell their works on the street. Learning from the way vendors on Canal St selling bootlegs, outworks creates an exciting but safe experience for customers to purchase the creation they desire while offering an inclusive place for creators to showcase and sell their creations.
User Research
In this project, our team worked on a topic about young women's mental wellbeing and how it's influenced by social media. During the research, we realized that what young women experienced on social media is a "feedback loop", where they consistently seek out content that makes them feel good but being exposed to more harmful content and finally stuck in that loop. And we create a prototype called Instabrace to help them break away from the loop.
Web UX/UI Design
A top cell phone company in China is looking for a way to monitor their user experience data and improve their user experience. There are seven services in their company that need monitoring. My role is to rebuild the online monitoring system based on the previous design.
Digital & Physical UX Design
Can we use piracy as a gateway to critique the fashion system?
Unauthorized Collab believes that fashion products should not be created only for a small number of people. Unauthorized Collab reveals piracy to be a way to critique existing fashion brands and fashion products. It “collabs” with various brands to tailor DIY kits which include patterns, materials and instructions to guide customers in making any fashion item they desire.
UX Design & Industrial Design
"Lighten" is a lamp with a supporting APP that can help people build an environment they love with custom lighting and projections. It can be used to create a joyful environment as a break from work, or be used to project post-it notes to be more efficient at work.
VODA
Industrial Design
VODA's vision is to facilitate access to clean and safe drinking water by creating a water filter system that uses what you already have: your geographic location, your local water source, and your existing pitcher. The VODA system includes a refillable water funnel and filtration system with compostable filter media. VODA's filter system is geo-specific instead of providing a one-size-fits-all global solution. Other competitors in the market have plastic filters that must be discarded, but VODA allows users to reuse the filter cartridge and recycle the compostable material. Instead of encouraging consumers to buy more, we want people to exercise less excessive consumption. Being pitcher-agnostic, VODA also encourages people to use the containers they already have.